


This Eternal Flame

by ElenaCee



Series: Devil's Trap [10]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 15:03:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10744104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElenaCee/pseuds/ElenaCee
Summary: The Devil's own heart continues to be mysterious. Chloe tries to help.





	This Eternal Flame

“Well,” the young woman said, face set, “I’m not telling you anything.”

Chloe sighed. Their case was almost complete. There was just one crucial last piece they needed. And as per usual, the key witness was about to lawyer up. “That’s your right, Mrs Miller.” She sat back, waiting.

The witness relaxed, giving a faint smile of triumph. “I assume I’m free to go, then?”

Chloe kept her eyes on the woman, returning the smile with one of her own. This was when every other team would have hit a dead end. Fortunately, it was not a normal team Mrs Miller was up against.

Seated next to Chloe, the Devil leaned forward. “Not quite yet, darling,” he purred.

Chloe could see it hit the other woman. It wasn’t his draw-out-desires charm yet, it was just Lucifer’s default charm, the one that evoked, as he had once put it, “carnal fascination” in everyone he met. The one that made total strangers whom they passed in the street smile at and come on to him. Chloe tried to accept it as one of the things she’d have to put up with being the Devil’s lover, but it wasn’t easy watching him literally collect phone numbers each time he set foot outside.

She emerged from her musings to find Mrs Miller’s smile morphed into one of helpless rapture, unable to resist that voice combined with that accent. The moment her eyes met Lucifer’s, her fate was sealed.

“Come on,” he purred. “I can see it eating at you, that desire, that need that drives you. What is it?”

Even without looking at him, Chloe could hear the smile in his voice, could see its effect on Angela Miller’s face.

“I….”

She fought it; Chloe could see her straining against the suggestion. But this was the Devil who had her under his spell.

“Oooh, you’re a complicated one,” Lucifer said, the purr in his voice deepening. “But I can sense it, something dark behind that pretty facade. Eating at you. A secret you’re keeping hidden, that you yearn to unburden yourself of. Come on. You want to tell me, don’t you.”

What was it like, Chloe wondered. What was Angela feeling right now? Was it like hypnotism? Was she aware? Did she feel the intrusion into her mind? Could she feel herself being taken over, unable to stop it?

“I want to…”

“Yes? Tell me.... You can tell me. You’ll feel so much better, I promise.”

She gulped, gulped again, and broke. “I want to be free of this guilt!” Her face crumbled. “I can’t take it anymore!”

That was Chloe’s cue. “What have you done, Mrs Miller?” she asked, keeping her own voice low, unobtrusive. She could feel Lucifer maintaining his power, giving her an opening, inviting her to work with him.

“I opened the door for Harold. I stood by and watched. And did nothing.”

Lucifer’s shock was obvious from how quickly he dropped his charm. “How could you? He was your husband!”

“Angela Miller, you’re under arrest for complicity in the murder of Stanley Miller,” Chloe began her spiel, throwing Lucifer a worried glance. She never quite knew which way he’d jump when a case touched him personally. And this one clearly did.

“Why?” Lucifer said, standing up and leaning over the table, looking down at the young woman from his towering height. “How could you let your husband, the man you had vowed to spend the rest of your life with, be murdered in front of you?” His voice betrayed his complete incomprehension.

Two uniformed officers had entered the interrogation room at Chloe’s signal. As they took Ms Miller’s arms, the woman turned back to Lucifer.

“I didn’t love him anymore,” she said, just before being led out. “It happens.”

The door closed, leaving the two of them alone in the room.

“It happens,” Lucifer echoed, still sounding like the rug had been pulled out from under him. He looked at Chloe. “It _happens_?” His eyes were fairly begging her to make this make sense to him.

Unfortunately, there was nothing she could tell him that would reassure him. “Yeah, it does,” she said. “Do you know how high the divorce rate is in the States?”

“But…” He looked like she had just kicked a puppy. “How is that possible? Isn’t love supposed to be this eternal flame?”

“Well no, it’s not. At least not for everyone,” she said, realizing too late where he was coming from.

She could practically see his walls come up in his eyes. “I see,” he said, voice flat. “Well. We’ve solved our case, I suppose I can go deal with my night job for a bit.” He nodded at her and turned to go.

_Dammit_. He was so childlike in some things that she didn’t know whether she wanted to hug him or slap him. “Lucifer,” she said quickly, taking his elbow to stop him leaving. “I’m not her, okay? Don’t make this about us.”

He gave her a smile. “I’m not,” he said, too fast.

"I think you are.” She knew he never lied, except to himself.

His frown told her that she’d been right. “Am I?”

Conscious of the one-way mirror behind her, she stepped close to him to look up in his eyes, trying to make the eye contact between them as intimate as the kiss she didn’t dare give him. “I love you. I’ll always love you. Even after death, which is something I can say now that I know I actually do have an immortal soul.”

His smile was bittersweet. “Chloe, how can you be _sure_?”

How could someone so old as to predate Earth be so immature? “Nothing’s sure, except death and taxes,” she quipped, “but I’m reasonably certain about this. I know I’ve never felt like this before.”

“Not even with Dan?” he blurted.

And here was another thing she was realizing she’d have to learn to put up with - explaining human feelings to the Devil in a way he could understand. Maybe she should ask Linda for some pointers.

Anyways, this definitely wasn’t a discussion they should be having right here, right now, but if Chloe had learned one thing about their thing, it was that she should never let Lucifer sit alone on an emotional conundrum and allow him to draw his own conclusions. That kind of thing tended to end with him going off the rails at best and wanting to go back to Hell at worst.

They needed privacy, now. She took his elbow again to drag him out of the interrogation room. “Come on. Let’s have a coffee before you go be the mysterious night club owner.”

He let himself be dragged and sat down in one of the chairs in the (thankfully empty) precinct kitchen, absently accepting the mug of coffee (made with their new coffeemaker) she handed him, his focus completely on her.

“No, not even with Dan,” Chloe picked up the thread. “I felt something for him, of course, but…” She smiled. “This is like night and day. Now that I know what I’m capable of feeling, I’m not even sure I ever really loved him. Certainly not like I love you.”

He held the mug in his hands, looking at her intently. “And now? Do you still…?”

“I still like him a lot,” she said, taking a sip. “I actually think we get along better now that we’re divorced than we have for a while. But no, I don’t love him like I did anymore.”

He put the mug down on the table. “So, love can die. It’s not eternal.”

She suppressed a sigh. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t understand. “No, Lucifer. It’s not always eternal. But it can be.”

He peered at her. “You fell out of love once already. For you, it clearly isn’t.” His eyes fairly begged her for help with this.

Putting her mug down next to his, she stepped close to him and sat one hip on the table in front of him. “You’ve never been in love before. How do you know that your love will be eternal?”

He blinked up at her. “I just know.”

“See.” She tousled his hair and smoothed it back down. “So do I.”

He let her ruffle him without objection, his gaze never wavering. “So you didn’t know, with Dan?”

She paused, remembering. In retrospect, her warm, gentle affection for Dan back then paled in comparison to the incandescent flame of love she now felt for Lucifer. But telling him that again wouldn’t dispel his uncertainty. In fact, she didn’t know what she could possibly say that would help him.

But she had to try. “Love is one of life’s great mysteries, Lucifer. It can’t be forced, suppressed, predicted, or quantified. You just know it when you feel it. But it does have to be kept alive.” She could read the question in his eyes. “You keep it alive by communicating. Talking about what you feel for each other. Sorting out misunderstandings before they happen. Affirming your love. It’s not easy. That is why people do fall out of love. It’s up to us to make it work. But it doesn’t have to die for us just because it did for someone else, or even for me.”

And she shouldn’t have to tell him any of this, she thought angrily. He should already have learned all that in his youth, like most humans did when they fell in love for the first time. But he’d never experienced love, or what it felt like to lose a love. Instead, he had been cut off from his own kind, forced into exile, into literal Hell, before he had a chance to grow to adulthood emotionally.

_God_ , she thought bitterly, _that was good parenting how exactly? I thought You were supposed to be infallible._

Meanwhile, Lucifer was looking at her with a look of confused determination that made her want to hug him. “I’m afraid you’ll have to teach me how to do all that,” he said softly.

She smiled. “Sure.”

He returned the smile. “I can advise you on how to punish people in return.”

“I’ll take you up on that when it comes up,” she said softly.

“Deal.”

“Right. So, for starters, just… promise me you’ll try to talk to me about these things in future, okay? Don’t go flying off the handle when you don’t understand something about human behavior.”

“I promise.”

 

* * *

 

It should have ended there, but it didn’t.

Ever since that case, Chloe sensed a new wariness in Lucifer. Whenever she told him she needed to talk to him about something, he flinched and then visibly braced himself, only to relax in obvious relief as soon as he learned what it was she wanted to talk about.

The third time it happened, she called him out on it.

They were in his penthouse; Lucifer was getting ready to party, and she had just wanted to ask him a quick question before she left. “Lucifer. What did you expect me to say just then?”

He looked away. “It’s not important.”

“Tell me anyway. Please.”

“I’d rather not. Doctor Linda says it’s something I must work through on my own and shouldn’t trouble you with.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Did she really say that? You shouldn’t trouble me?”

He looked down at his hand playing with his ring. “Her exact words were, ‘you have to realize that this is something that might upset Chloe.’” He managed to imitate Linda’s accent and cadence perfectly. “So I inferred it’s best not to tell you.”

“Alright.” She patted the couch next to her, inviting him to sit down.

He did so, looking at her pleadingly.

“You don’t want to upset me,” she began.

He nodded.

“Then you know where I’m coming from when I say that I don’t want anything upsetting you, either, right?”

“Right.”

“Now, this clearly does upset you. Whatever it was you thought I’d say just then.”

He sighed. “It does, but I know it’s unfounded. Probably. So I’m working on not expecting you to say it. But it’s hard.”

It was the added ‘probably’ that did it. “Lucifer.” She reached out to stroke his stubbled cheek. “You just looked at me as though you thought I’d tell you we’re over.”

He actually gasped, then nodded.

_Oh God. This is all Your fault._ She had to take a moment to hunt for the right words. “And you think it’s ‘probably’ unfounded? Sometimes I really don’t know what to do with you. Which part of ‘I want forever with you’ don’t you get through that thick Devil skull of yours?”

His hand came up to cover hers where it rested on his face. “I know! I know all that. Linda explained it all to me. Something about the uncertainties of life and taking each day as it comes and not borrowing trouble and so on. I try!”

She gave him an encouraging smile. “But…?”

“But it’s just… It’s like there’s this part inside of me that doesn’t listen to my head. It keeps telling me that it’s only a matter of time before you come to your senses, and I can’t get it to shut up. And each time you say that you need to talk to me...” He let himself fall back against the backrest. “Is that what it’s like for you humans? Is that what you mean when you talk about the Devil on your shoulders? Because it’s bloody annoying. I mean, I’m the Devil. I can’t have myself sitting on my own shoulder, that’s too Escherian for my taste.”

He looked at her, all the confusion and conflict he felt plain to see in his eyes, and she held out her arms to him.

He blinked at them for half a second, visibly needing to remember what that gesture was supposed to tell him, then he let himself be hugged, and she felt a sharp sting in her chest at this reminder of how alien he really was.

Eons, she remembered. Billions of years. Billions. She couldn’t even imagine living for ten thousand years. And he’d been alive for billions of them. Not one billion. Billions, plural. An effective eternity spent without knowing hugs, or caresses, or any other form of physical affection. No wonder he was so out of his depth. This was all too much, too soon.

But even after all this time alone, he still had the capacity and willingness to learn how to be not alone. Also, he was still sane, which was at least as much a miracle as he kept telling her she was.

“What can I do?” she asked, running her hands up and down his back. “How can I convince you that this will be forever?” A thought came to her. “What would you do, to convince me?”

“Give you my word, of course. My word is my bond.”

“So, if I give you my word, my solemn oath, will you believe that it binds me?”

She could feel his warm breath against her neck as he sighed. “You’ll have to ask the part of me that I can’t convince.” He raised his head to look at her. “ _I_ do believe you, Chloe. You’ve told me so many times. I _have_ to believe you now, because I can’t go back.”

She kissed him. “I can’t go back, either. Don’t want to go back. In this for the long run.”

“Hmhm. Same here.”

They both fell silent. Chloe allowed herself a moment to just enjoy her Devil’s warmth, his unique smell beneath his expensive cologne, the way his tall, broad-shouldered body enveloped her, making her feel safe and secure.

“I’m afraid,” he said into her neck, so softly she could barely hear him. “I don’t know what I’ll do if… when…”

He kept coming back to that, and it hurt her deeply that she couldn’t help him. “Don’t,” she said, pulling him closer. “Try not to think about it.”

She was working on that one herself. She didn’t want to ever leave him, but, barring divine intervention, she was mortal. What would happen to him after she was gone? Would he go berserk? Storm Heaven to be with her? Go back to his old ways? Unlearn everything she had taught him? Or maybe, possibly, find someone else to love?

He shuddered in her arms, then drew a deep breath and disentangled himself. “Right. What did you want to talk to me about, anyway?”

She, too, composed herself. “Oh yeah. I’m planning a camping trip for Trixie. She keeps asking me to ask you whether you want to come with.”

He looked at her like she had grown another head. “A camping… trip…?”

“Yeah. You know. Camping. Tents, air mattresses, the great outdoors. Back to basics. Long hikes in the wilderness. All things I’m sure you’ve never done before, new experiences.”

A world of doubt lay in his eyes. “You do this for fun?”

“Trixie loves it, so yeah. But we also do it to get away from the big city for a while. It’s good for the soul. Breathe clean air. Learn to make do without all the unnecessary luxury.”

“Like pressed suits, and pre-warmed towels, and soft warm beds,” Lucifer added. “Sounds terrible.”

“Is that a no?”

He didn’t reply immediately.

Sensing her chance, Chloe pressed on. “There will be camping fires, s’mores, baked potatoes and so on.”

“But no sex.”

Uh-oh. That was a powerful objection. Time to bring out the big guns. “I’ll groom your wings for you for hours. Trixie, too.”

He wavered, but held fast. “I doubt the tent will be big enough for that.”

Briefly, she imagined him inside their moderate family tent, wings out, folded half over and of top of them, feathers everywhere. “It’ll be cozy. Like a nest.”

He gave her an amused smile. “You really want this.”

She returned the smile. “Yeah. Very much. C’mon, Lucifer. Be a Devil.”

He chortled. “How long have you been sitting on that one?”

“Hmm, a while.”

He heaved a sigh. “Very well, then.”

“Great. You’ll make Trixie very happy, you know. And me, too.”

“I’m only doing this to make you happy.”

“Hmm. You’ll like it, too.

“We’ll see.”

“ _You’ll_ see.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again for all your comments and kudos on this series; it means a lot and makes me want to keep writing even more. <3


End file.
